Hello! Sorry for being away for so long, my computer has been broken, and I've only been able to fix it now since the right part came... on the fifth of January...tomorrow I have college again. Look I know it makes looks like I've been lazy but I've been busy and hardware hasn't been the kindest to me. This doesn't mean I will be putting out sub-par work though. As I was looking through my Pinterest board these images that all looked similar kept on cropping up that I liked, and after a little more looking, I found who made them, Geloy Concepcion.
But before we look at the artwork and explain why I like it, I should talk a little bit about this person's personal life to see where he came from. He was a man born in 1992 and raised in Pandacan which is one of the roughest places in Manila, Philippines. He originally did cartoons for newspapers but found a more significant interest in making murals around his home city instead. But we aren't here for his other work, we're here to talk about one of his collections he's been doing for a long time, "THINGS YOU WANTED TO SAY BUT NEVER DID".
Now, usually, when I look at artists I just look at single pieces that they make, but this series that Geloy made really jumped out to me. This was a series that started during COVID, and he recently moved to San Francisco with his child as his wife worked in a cafe. Due to the little amount of time, he had more nowadays to focus on making full pieces, he used his platform he had to ask a single question to his many followers, "share the things you wanted to say but never did." And so, his followers poured their hearts with either short or long messages about what they wished they said.
With all of these responses, he paired them with old images he had left around and merged them with old photos he has lying around from family, along with using other people's submitted images for his work. To keep privacy along with writing on the pictures without destroying them, he put some sort of layer over the photos and made it look like the people were painted out in white, and the text on top was written in his own handwriting.
With this, he had an awful lot of photos made with the collaboration of people he never really met, but despite such, they chose to pour a little bit of their pain to him to create libraries of images, all significant to somebodies life. To me, this is such a beautiful concept, connecting people with one another with messages that relate to many. The best way to describe how these make me feel is Geloy's comment on how people perceive his work, in which Geloy Concepcion says "People have told me there's a sense of relief and release that comes from seeing their text with the images. I think they just want someone to be able to relate to them."
But that's enough of talking about the overall project, Let's look at some of the pieces I really like from it, mainly the ones I collected from Pinterest.
So, as per the last of my posts, I will be asking five questions about these pieces. Who made the piece? What mediums have been used to create this piece? When was it made and how do I think it has affected the creation of this piece? Where was this piece made and how it could have relevance in the photo? And Why did this artist make this piece? I might also add some things about things I like and don't like about it.
So, Who made this piece? Well, This is technically made by multiple people if we're being specific. The first person is Geloy Concepcion, who organised this all. Then we have the stranger who submitted the text, then we also have the person who originally took this photo if we're assuming he didn't take this and if we're stretching it the person in the picture too.
What mediums have been used to create this? We can tell from the framing around the main image, along with the artefacts like minor scratching this is a real film photo. We also know this is real film because of Geloy says these are old photos that he has. We can also only assume that whiting out of the picture is painted, due to the texture it has at the edges along with the minor imperfections of not full coverage in the middle. We also have the subtle use of a regular pen as well, but from the mild pile-up of what could be ink at some of the letters this could be a quite leaky pen, or instead a fountain pen but I doubt it, but the thickness and consistency of the text look like its more of a felt tip pen. I also think that the layer of the paint on the film is digitally made, as the paint is a scanned copy from a black piece of paper, and using the magic wand tool they made this sort of effect.
When was this made? From looking everywhere, we don't exactly know when these photos are taken due to Geloy never telling us whenever he uploads these to Instagram, where he mainly works. I also am not feeling bothered enough to find out when he uploaded this since he has at least over 300 of these sorts of photos and I don't have enough time. But we can assume this is between 2021 and now, since to this day he is still making these. I don't think these are affected by the date these are made physically, due to such a simple process being able to be done for over 10 years to this sort of quality quite easily. Although, maybe the year 2021 and onwards push this person to talk to Geloy anonymously to submit this text, due to these years being extremely hard for people to live with because of things like Covid and other terrible things that have affected people these years.
Where was this made? Well, since Geloy doesn't tell us the contact for any of these pieces he makes, we have to instead assume. In this photo, it looks like it was taken in a home of older age, due to certain decor like the large piano in the background, along with the lamps on top of it looking quite old. The way the person is dressed in the photo too also makes them look older, although we shouldn't assume since this could also just be an actor used for the photo, for the simple reason of me wanting to be right without having to do more research, I will go with the first option. For where this was made physically, I could only assume this is made in San Fransico where Geloy resides today, which I don't think has affected how this looks either since this looks like such a piece that has little to no involvement of the environment of the piece.
Why was this made? Now, this is the most subjective in my opinion since this can really tell you very obviously. But that doesn't mean I won't try, but I feel like the reason why this piece was made in the first place is that Geloy really liked the quote that this stranger said, and wanted to make a piece based around this since he doesn't get paid to make this series and instead it is a passion project.
From looking at Geloy's other pieces from this series, it appears this is one of the rare cases in that he uses a film picture with the border showing since the others have very clean border cutoffs. Looking at his older work as well, we can tell that he went from having the text more on the outside to having it on the inside, along with other pieces not even having people in them and are instead large pieces of text with pleasing, warm or cold scenery in the background.
Well now that I've done one that seems to be a little older in the collection, let's have a look at one of his newer pieces, this one is from 2022, December 8th!
This one is very different compared to the other ones Geloy has done before, although he has made other pieces where the text isn't inside the person, to have a split image like this, along with using different brushes for people's faces is also interesting and I think pretty coolly!
So, who made this piece? Well, we obviously have the photographers who made these photos, since Geloy has said that he also uses submitted photos too, these two that are being used could easily be different people who took the photos. With this, we also have Geloy also for putting all of this together, along with adding the text and paint marks. Also, we could count the people in the photo if we wanna stretch it but I don't think I personally would at this point.
Well, what mediums are used in this piece? Now, from looking at this I don't think this is made physically at all, and I will explain why. We first have the images being so cleanly attached to one another, which can be achieved very easily by the simple move tool. I also noticed a pattern with his photos when he released these 10 on the 8th, and that's that they all have slight specs of dust, scratches and artefacts too! Not exactly the same but it's shockingly similar, so these photos might not even be taken from a film camera instead these are regular photos with the flash on and edited to have these specks, along with a large amount of blur it has. I also think that this is digital because of the way the person is cut out, along with the paint splodges. The cutout person looks quite similar to a simple lasso tool cut out with a white background behind the original image, along with the paint strokes displaying a texture similar to a canvas, where these images, if they were real, would have a more smooth texture. The bottom text though looks like it has been actually drawn though, so maybe he took a photo of his text, cut out the letters and coloured them white to then throw over the image at the bottom. The bottom image also looks to be turned upside down picture of a climb of a mountain, possibly to reflect the text used.
When was this made? Now, this is a hard question because this piece has been uploaded on December 8th, but we do know that Geloy likes to use older photos, or at least get photos and make them look older than they actually are, so we could only guess. For the bottom picture, I know older photography well enough that the slight purple look is known to be from older cameras, mainly popular in the 1970s and 80s from images I've seen through time, so I would assume around then, along with this being in the winter due to the trees looking quite barren unless the tree is evergreen. The purple tint through could be more clever editing from Geloy though so I could only assume this is an untouched photo since there aren't any signs to tell me it isn't. The top photo is harder though since I have a feeling it could be newer, maybe around the 90s or even 2000s, although the bright flash and good colours are pushing me to the 2000s, same with the clothing. Apart from that though I can't really tell, and I think that the age of the images doesn't really matter here, unless they do matter for their specific qualities for cameras of their time along with the things being captured of the era, but that's all I can really think of. When this was actually like put together? around December 8th or around a week before, since the upload before this December 8th one, he didn't upload for 9 days. But even with figuring this out, it doesn't change much. Maybe the newer direction or fluke of having multiple images in a single piece, along with perhaps using images as symbolism for the text at hand here with the trees being upside down could represent how it doesn't feel like they are a part of the regular world, and instead an upside down one, showing that through his years of starting this series, he is dabbling in a little more storytelling with his images, along with using more tools to create something more unique, that's about it.
Where was this made? I have no clue. Obviously, this was put together in San Fransisco by Geloy, but these images could be of anywhere, but I could assume that the bottom one was taken in Canada or somewhere in the northern hemisphere due to the large mountains and the colder-looking climate, but that's about it. But with where these were taken and where it was made, I don't think it has any sort of inherent influence due to the simple nature of the piece not giving the viewer any information about such whereabouts.
Why was this made? I think the reason why he made this is that he wanted to let this stranger use his suggestion, part as a way to vent their troubles and hard times to receive love but to also feel less alone about their problem and see that people relate to it to any sort of degree.
That one was really fun too, although I was struggling a little bit on what to say, I think it's overall quite an interesting image to analyse and work on. This final one is a cool one in my opinion, due to it being a whole lot older than I thought, being made on the 19th of October, 2021.
I like this one because of the interesting layout of the photo. It's almost a two-thirds photo, with the text taking up two-thirds, the middle and the left, whilst the other prominent object, the white figure, takes up one-third of the image, the right. The only problem is that the camera isn't exactly lined up for it to be perfectly in the middle, or the text is too big for it to be balanced, but either way, I found it interesting. I also like the darker, cooler tones of this image. I would tell you other things I like about this but I need content to write about.
So, Who made this piece? The comper of this is usual, yours truly, Geloy Concepcion, along with the person who is behind the many brush strokes of this image, if anybody is really there and that it isn't just a silhouette of a person that's on the picture.
What mediums were used in this piece? I think photography was obviously used in this piece, due to the fact there is a photograph right where we look at it, but I also feel like it was also used for the text. There's a little trick I learnt through my time using Adobe Illustrator where if you take pictures and edit them, you can make it look like whatever you drew or written in real life was written using software, using a mixture of many tools like a magic wand and colour overlay, and I think Geloy used that to add the text in for this since the lines don't always stay the same thickness which is a common trait of mouse-drawn text and images, along with the writing itself looking more handwritten, although struggling, which could be a reflection on how the personification of the text feels. Speaking of people, we can see a textured brush tool was used on this piece, due to the same fabric texture left on the place where it's painted. This is better though because you can see he has used multiple sizes of the brush which can be seen inside the silhouette of where is whiter, although still noticeable as faked using the software. Speaking of things that are faked using software, I have a sneaky suspicion that the noise and/or grain is faked in this, due to the prominent usage of many other noisy photos that look awfully similarly noisy to this one. Maybe some colour toning was used as well but I don't know which types since I don't do research into that sort of editing.
Where was this made? As usual, this was composed on a computer in San Fransico by our Geloy. The photo though looks like somewhere where they have large flat areas with what looks like palm trees, but also hills in the background, and the only place I can think of that has both of those in California. I also assume there because of the very sunny weather shown in the photo too, which because of how sunny it is makes me think more that this coldness has been edited in. The location of this photo though, I think has the significance of the rest of the piece. This is because the text chosen for this one is about moving forward without receiving an apology. For me, a good way for people to know you apologise is to say sorry and give them flowers, and in this photo, we have what seems to be two bushes of the same type of flower but in different colours. That's about it though, I can't really think of anything else for this part.
When was this made? The date of upload of this image compared to the last time he uploaded for his "THINGS YOU WANTED TO SAY BUT NEVER DID" series was around 7 days, so he had a week to perfect this and nine other images. The photo itself is also giving me the feeling of the 70s or 80s due to the really cold tone, and how colour imbalance was a trend in photography back then, but that might also just be the cleaver editing tricks he has implemented into the design, so I think it could be more around 90's but that's just a straight up guess since I don't have much to go off here without it being that it could just be good editing. But, the time of release, October, might be the reason why Geloy used an image with orange and yellow flowers, to represent pumpkins for the Halloween season, along with the darker tone to reflect the dark nights that come up during the middle of autumn, but for me, those are far stretches.
Why did they make this piece? I think the reason why they made this is that they saw somebodies message they sent, and thought it looked quite nice and relatable, so he tried and implement it into an upload since this is quite relatable for me personally.
But overall, I think this one has been really fun! like this overall analysis of the series that Geloy has done here, it's a really touching way to see people's journeys through life, and their deep and personal ones too at that. I wanna try and implement something like this, using photography that looks quite old into my graphics for this or just asking people, or if they wanted to do it anonymously instead, talk about the things *they* regret not saying sooner.
Comments